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Books by Marcus Bruce
Christian
Song of the Black Valiants: Marching Tempo
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High Ground: A Collection of Poems /
Negro soldiers in the Battle of New Orleans
I am New
Orleans: A Poem
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Negro Iron Workers of Louisiana: 1718-1900 /
The Liberty Monument
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Books by Richard Wright
Richard Wright: Early Works /
Black Boy /
Native Son /
Uncle Tom's Children /
12 Million Black Voices /
Richard Wright: Later Works
The Outsider /
Pagan
Spain /
Black Power /
White Man Listen! /
The Color Curtain /
Savage Holiday /
The Long Dream
Eight Men: Short Stories /
Haiku /
American Hunger /
Lawd Today!
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Letters from the
Archives
of Marcus Bruce Christian
From & To Friends, Colleagues, & Wife
Letter 30
Ruth
[MBC's wife] Enjoys Negro life in Chicago
ARMY SERVICE FORCES
Chicago Signal Depot
1903 West Pershing Road
Chicago 9, Illinois
June 1, 1945
Dear Bruce,
I received your wonderful little book and I thought it -- as always a wonderful piece of work. Thank you.
Guess what? I went to the Regal theater to see Duke Ellington in person and guess who I saw in the All-American
Newsreel? None other than our friend, Dr. Buggs. The announcer said Buggs is the only Negro at Wayne University.
About two weeks ago Walter White spoke at Du Sable High School that's just 2 blocks away from my house. I wanted to go
but the advertisement did not state that the public was
invited and gave no time. I phoned operator but she said they were not allowed to give out the high school's phone number . . . the
weather was bad, so I didn't take a chance on going.
Rev. Clayton Powell also spoke there sometimes ago. I
was working nights then and couldn't go.
I did manage to see Paul Robeson in the stage play "Othello" though. He was Great!
I also made it a point to see Helen Hayes, in the stage play
"Harriet." She was perfect! And . . . I also saw
Katheryne Dunham and her troupe in "A Tropical Revue." I don't have
to tell you that was the greatest thing I have ever seen since I have been there. She played at the
Studebaker Theater.
Duke Ellington gave a concert at the Opera House, again
I was working nights and missed him.
Last week Richard Wright
took part on the Town Hall meeting. They discussed the Race Problem. Wright was good, but
I was a little disappointed in the tone of his voice. Maybe it's his southern accent. . . . I don't know. He was very good
though. Did you hear him or did the program get through?
One man, I presume he was white, asked Wright about
Negro Psychology. Wright told him, he knew of no such animal. He received a big hand.
How are you getting along at Dillard and how is the
book coming along? Give my regards to Willie, Sister, Ben, and all the folks,
Sincerely,
Ruth
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Ruth Warm again on Chicago and Gives Christian Her View of
Conflict /
Ruth Unhappy with Christian's Response
Ruth Lonely for
Christian Chicago Wears Thin /
Ruth Enjoys Negro
Life in Chicago /
Ruth, the Bible, & a
Marriage Certificate
Ruth Anxious Aout War's
End Plans to return to Will's Point
<<---Previous29 Next--31->>
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Richard Wright (1908-1960) set the
standard for prose writing for an entire generation, including
Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin. Born on a plantation near
Natchez, Mississippi, Wright used his personal life to dramatize
racial injustice and its brutalizing effects.
He first won fame
while working for the federal Writers Project in Chicago when he
published Uncle Tom's Children (1938), receiving an award
for the best fiction by a WPA writer and a Guggenheim
Fellowship.
Two years later he published Native Son, which became a Book
of-the-Month choice. |
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Fiction
Uncle
Tom's Children. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1938;
HarperCollins, 1993.
Native
Son. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1940; HarperCollins, 1993.
The
Outsider. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1953; HarperCollins,
1993.
Savage
Holiday. New York: Avon Books, 1954; Jackson: University Press
of Mississippi, 1994.
The
Long Dream New York: Doubleday, 1958.
Eight
Men. Cleveland: World, 1961.
Lawd
Today! New York: Avon Books, 1963; Boston: Northeastern
University Press, 1993.
Rite of Passage. New
York: Harper Collins, 1994.
NonFiction
Twelve Million
Black Voices. New York: Viking Press, 1941.
Black Boy. New
York: Harper & Brothers, 1945; HarperCollins, 1993.
Black Power. New
York: Harper & Brothers, 1954. T
The Color Curtain.
Cleveland: World, 1954; Jackson: University Press of
Mississippi, 1994.
Pagan Spain. New
York: Harper & Row, 1957.
White Man, Listen!
New York: Doubleday, 1957.
American Hunger. New York: Harper & Row,
1977.
Poetry
Haiku: This Other World. Eds. Yoshinobu Hakatuni and Robert
L. Tener. Arcade, 1998. * *
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Selected Letters
Selected Diary Notes Memories of Marcus B. Christian
(Cains) Christian's
BioBibliographical Record Introduction to I AM NEW
ORLEANS
A
Theory of a Black Aesthetic Magpies,
Goddesses, & Black Male Identity
Activist Works on Next Level of Change
Intro to I Am New
Orleans
Letter from Dillard University
A
Labor of Genuine Love
Letter of Gift of
Photos
Letters from
LSU and Skip Gates * * *
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Negro Iron Workers of Louisiana: 1718-1900
By Marcus Bruce Christian
Study of the blacksmith
tradition and New Orleans famous lace balconies and
fences.
Acclaimed
during his life as the unofficial poet laureate of
the New Orleans African-American community, Marcus
Christian recorded a distinguished career as
historian, journalist, and literary scholar. He was
a contributor to Pelican's
Gumbo Ya Ya, and also wrote many articles
that appeared in numerous newspapers, journals, and
general-interest publications. |
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Greenback Planet: How the Dollar Conquered
the World and Threatened Civilization as We Know It
By H. W. Brands
In Greenback Planet, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands charts the dollar's astonishing rise to become the world's principal currency. Telling the story with the verve of a novelist, he recounts key episodes in U.S. monetary history, from the Civil War debate over fiat money (greenbacks) to the recent worldwide financial crisis. Brands explores the dollar's changing relations to gold and silver and to other currencies and cogently explains how America's economic might made the dollar the fundamental standard of value in world finance. He vividly describes the 1869 Black Friday attempt to corner the gold market, banker J. P. Morgan's bailout of the U.S. treasury, the creation of the Federal Reserve, and President Franklin Roosevelt's handling of the bank panic of 1933. Brands shows how lessons learned (and not learned) in the Great Depression have influenced subsequent U.S. monetary policy, and how the dollar's dominance helped transform economies in countries ranging from Germany and Japan after World War II to Russia and China today. He concludes with a sobering dissection of the 2008 world financial debacle, which exposed the power--and the enormous risks--of the dollar's worldwide reign. The Economy |
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Salvage the Bones
A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.— WashingtonPost
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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